The Twentieth Century: Modern French Literature and the Quest for the Sacred
FRT 4956
Spring 2007
- 3 Credits Professor
- William Calin
- Paris Research Center
- Honors in Paris - Spring 2007
Course will meet once weekly for three hours (excluding outside activities)
Course Requirements
- Students are expected to keep up with the reading assignments and to participate actively in class discussion. This is absolutely essential for the proper functioning of the seminar format.
- One fifteen-page paper for the end of the semester.
- The grading will be based on performance under numbers 1 and 2.
Course Description
In past centuries coexisted two literary traditions of approximately equal importance: the sacred and the secular. Today, in an allegedly post-Christian age, the quest for the sacred retains its importance, indeed, becomes as excitingly problematic as the 20th century itself, especially in the meeting of and tension between religion and everyday life. The meeting and the tension also have a political function in a land where religious issues are to be found at the center of political, social and intellectual discourse; they also function as one way of looking at French identity. The question of religion reflects the continuities and the disparities in the French tradition; today we find, in addition, a more varied, diverse representation of the religious with Muslim and Jewish voices in addition to the Catholic and the Protestant.
We shall look at the following topics:
- The Dreyfus Affair
- Traditional Catholicism: Christian poetry: Some texts in French with translation
- - Traditional Protestantism & its discontents: André Gide, Strait is the Gate
- Christian anguish: Georges Bernanos, Under Satan's Sun
- People without God: François Mauriac, Vipers' Tangle
- Existential atheism: Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit
- Muslim spirituality: Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ambiguous Adventure
- The Jewish experience & WWII: Elie Wiesel, Night
We shall visit the Grande Mosquée; museums such as the Institute of the Arab World and the Museum of Art and History of Judaism; and Memorials to the Holocaust. Central to the course will be guest lectures by specialists in French Protestantism, Judaism, and Islam.
Schedule
Week 1: January 10.
Introduction. Presentation of some aspects of the history of the Church and of Christian literature in France. Presentation of aspects of the cultural and political role of Christianity today.
Week 2: January 17.
The Dreyfus Affair. Visiting Lecture.
Weeks 3-4: January 24-31.
Catholicism. Christian Poetry. Typological criticism. Is there a Christian approach to literature?
Weeks 5-6: February 7-14.
Protestantism. Gide, Strait is the Gate. Visiting Lecture.
Weeks 7-8: February 21-28.
Christian Anguish. Bernanos, Under Satan's Sun. Is there a specifically twentieth-century version of Christianity and of Christian literature?
Week 9: March 7.
People without God. Mauriac, Vipers' Tangle.
March 14: Secular Holiday
Week 10: March 21.
Finish Mauriac. Existential Atheism. Sartre, No Exit.
Week 11: March 28.
Finish Sartre.
Weeks 12-13: April 4-11.
Muslim Spirituality. Kane, Ambiguous Adventure. Visiting Lecture.
April 18: Sacred Capstone
Weeks 14-15: April 25 - May 3.
Jewish Experience. Wiesel, Night. Visiting Lecture.
